Message of Swami Chidananda to Mankind - The Divine Life Society

YOGAThe loss of his awareness of that oneness with the infinite, all-perfect Source of his being is the verycause of his involvement in this earth-process called life. To regain a true awareness and to realiseonce again his everlasting oneness with the Divine is actually the practice of Yoga. The means ofovercoming the defects and imperfections of this earth-life and thus experiencing union with theSupreme constitute its structure. Yoga shows how to overcome the imperfections of the lowernature and to gain complete mastery over the mind and senses.All the techniques of Yoga require perfect ethical and moral purity. Purity is the foundationof Yogic life. One cannot be a bad man and yet try to practise Yoga. One cannot allow himself to beimpure, insincere, untruthful, deceitful and harmful to others and at the same time try to practiseYoga. There cannot be any spiritual realisation when interior circumstances are imperfect. Therecannot be any religious practice or true interior life when moral goodness is not deeply implanted inthe being. One has to be rooted in goodness, in purity, in truth and in selflessness. Half of theprocess of Yoga is in getting thus perfectly established in ideal moral conduct. When this basis hasbeen established, then the application of the techniques of Yoga is like the striking of a dry matchupon the match-box and immediately there is a flame. Without this basis, it is like trying to strikeand ignite a wet match upon a cake of soap—nothing happens.In all phases of Yogic life, the supreme factor is the Grace of God. Call it what you will. It isthe Grace of the Supreme Essence, the Source of all existence in which alone man realises his truenature and his deathless divinity. All the practices are purposeful when they make man movetowards God and merge into oneness with Him. That is the purpose of Yoga.MEDITATION AND ITS VALUEMeditation is the ultimate process when one has laid the foundation of spiritual fife, whenone has overcome the constant pull of the senses and has become the master of one’s senses, whenone through true discrimination and true inquiry, has realised the absolute hollowness of all that isperceived and therefore has overcome the natural tendencies of the mind towards appearances andhas succeeded in turning away completely from the desire for names and forms and attachment toobjects and experiences, when one has learned the techniques of withdrawing the mind from theouter appearances, and when one has cultivated and created within a state of quiescence, balance,and equipoise. In that condition of being firmly grounded in virtue, that condition of perfectsense-control and self-restraint, in that condition of conquest of desires and the mastery of one’spassions, in that condition of inner stability and equipoise, one begins to gather oneself and movetowards the concept or idea of what you feel of the Reality as opposed to appearances. This—theingathering of the totality of your being, and the centralising of this ingathered power in onespecific self-chosen direction,—is the object of your meditation, and the keeping up of a continuedand unbroken movement of the ingathered totality in that particular direction of your entire being.This ingathered and directed, when this continued unbroken movement succeeds, you are in a stateof meditation.So it is the successful movement, continuously, in a self-chosen direction, of the totality ofyour being, ingathered in a unity—a unified whole—that is called meditation. All other things are15